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Police blotter: Miscreants explain their misdeeds

Sometimes arresting officers ask a suspect why they did the bad thing, and sometimes the suspect just feels the need to explain without being asked. You see it both ways in the Ruidoso Police incident reports.

Police blotter: Miscreants explain their misdeeds

Sometimes arresting officers ask a suspect why they did the bad thing, and sometimes the suspect just feels the need to explain without being asked. You see it both ways in the Ruidoso Police incident reports.

Just last week a manager of the McDonald on Sudderth Drive called police to report that an employee – now a former employee – had put her hand in the till repeatedly and fetched out cash which she put in her own pocket.

The pilfering was plain as day on the security video, all five times. Altogether the thefts came to $260.

“When asked why she did it,” the officer reported, “she stated she had sticky fingers.”

Well. Nobody’s saying honesty isn’t the best policy, but another great expression is that there’s a time and a place for everything.

Some people figure this out when they’re still quite young. For example, take the teenaged boy who went into the Chillax Glass store on Sudderth Drive recently with a couple of friends.

While his pals discussed the relative merits of the bong selection with the proprietor, he went quickly to the one he wanted and put it under his shirt. The trio drove away in a gray van.

Chillax reported the shoplifting to police, and it didn’t take long to identify one of the youths, all aged 15 to 16. Before long, all three of them showed up at the station, escorted by their parents.

Two of them said they didn’t know anything about the bong until their buddy showed it to them in the van. Under parental duress, the third one coughed up the price of the merchandise.

Nobody asked him why he took it in the first place, but he volunteered that he did it because he wanted to sell the bong and use the money to buy a present for his mother.

It’s not easy to claim the high moral ground while confessing to an intentional crime, but this beardless youth seems to have found a way.

Of course many suspects try to avoid the need for an explanation entirely by denying that they’ve done anything wrong.

That was the approach taken on May 26 by a Ruidoso man who was observed in an impromptu drag race with another vehicle at the intersection of Highway 70 and Sudderth.

An officer pulled him over at Denny’s and immediately noticed “bloodshot, watery eyes,” “slurred speech,” and an “overwhelming odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from his person.”

He was also “unsteady on his feet.” But the most persuasive evidence of diminished capacity was that he had decided to engage in a speed contest while driving a Dodge Neon.

Still, he insisted he had not been drinking. But the officer looked inside the Neon and saw an open whiskey bottle, three quarters empty. And then he took a closer look at the driver. The man wore a neckace from which dangled a shot glass with a dribble of amber liquid still lining its bottom.

With denials like these, who needs a confession?

Let’s return to the theme of committing minor motor vehicle infractions so you can test the ability of the officer who pulls you over to spot all the other citations he could write, kind of like the “how many silly things can you see in this picture” game in your child’s High Five magazine.

On May 29, a white sedan heading south on Country Club signaled “game on” with a broken brake lamp. An officer pulled in behind the vehicle, and a small child in the back seat of the sedan stood up and turned around to watch the cruiser through the rear window. Check.

The officer flashed his lights and pulled the car over. Through the driver’s side window, he smelled marijuana. Double check. He asked to see paperwork on the vehicle. There was no registration, triple check, nor was there any proof of insurance, quadruple check.

No valid driver’s license either. Game over.

To sum up, improper equipment, child not seat-belted, no registration, no proof of insurance, no driver’s license, and possession of drugs and paraphernalia. Forgot to mention there was a pipe. The officer returned afterward to the station for a fresh citation pad.